2023-11-05 17:41:14
Özgür Özel, new president of the Republican People’s Party, during the party’s annual congress, in Ankara (Turkey), November 4, 2023. ADEM ALTAN / AFP
Turkey opened, Sunday, November 5, early in the night, a new page in its recent history: a page without Kemal Kiliçdaroglu. Aged 74, the president of the Republican People’s Party (CHP), the country’s main opposition party, was stripped of his mandate after a long day of debates and a heated vote by party delegates gathered in Ankara for their annual congress.
Thirteen years after taking the reins of the formation created by Atatürk, the founder of the Republic, the man who has long been nicknamed “the anti-Recep Tayyip Erdogan” for his optimistic and benevolent tone, keen to bring people together rather than to divide, pays a high price for his electoral defeat in the second round of the presidential election, in May, against the indestructible president, but also for his refusal to admit, since then, his failure, and to make way for a new generation of leaders.
“Reshaping Turkish politics”
At the congress, the delegates voted, after two rounds, in favor of Ozgür Ozel, 49 years old, MP, former pharmacist and still little known to the general public. Originally from the town of Manisa, near Izmir, a bastion of opposition to Erdogan, the man who presented himself as the candidate of the ” change “ won, around 2 a.m., the final vote, by 812 votes, against 536 for his opponent. Supported by the popular mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu, he highlighted, during his speech before the delegates, his desire to “reshape Turkish politics”. Loudly interrupted by the supporters of the outgoing leader, which required the intervention of Imamoglu, Ozgür Ozel said « refuse to act as if nothing had happened after the lost elections and not take responsibility for this heavy defeat [à la présidentielle] ».
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Very upset, too, Kemal Kiliçdaroglu claimed, for his part, to have “had to run for office with daggers in the back”an allusion to the internal tensions in the bloc of six opposition parties that he brought together before the presidential election, but also to the tensions over his candidacy within his own party. “We have seen fire and betrayalhe regretted. As soon as the election was over, and before we could even breathe, talk of change arose. »
Bitter, Kemal Kiliçdaroglu also wanted to respond to the growing criticism, after his failure, of his ultranationalist turn between the two rounds, where he launched into a sudden anti-immigrant escalation: “Those who say that the party has moved to the right, do not know what the right or the left is. I repeat, the CHP is the party of the people, you know my background. » Like his evening opponent, he emphatically greeted several personalities imprisoned by the current power, including the Kurdish leader Selahattin Demirtas and the philanthropist Osman Kavala.
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